Children Know that Dragons Exist
by Alyndra
Summary: Summary: Someone tossed John Winchester into a horror story when he wasn't watching. Mary is freaking out, too. Set right after the fire, Dean is 4 and not talking, and John Winchester is not actually a terrible parent.
1. Children Know that Dragons Exist

Notes: I freely admit that this fic is born of reading a few too many portrayals of John Winchester The Worst Parent Ever(TM) and I started feeling defensive of the poor guy. And I was gonna be all balanced and show his strengths and his flaws, and then I read a few more fics and was like, screw the flaws. We're going all out here.

John wasn't wrong.

* * *

The fire trucks had gotten there soon enough that most of the house was still all right. The flames hadn't spread much beyond the upstairs nursery at all. John and his boys stayed at the neighbors' for a couple nights, while they pitched in to help dry everything in the house out and he replaced the windows himself, but after that there was no reason not to move back in, not without thinking too hard about details of that night that John didn't want to (couldn't) spend too much time thinking about.

Dean was quiet but huddled close to John whenever he could, and stuck like glue to Sammy the rest of the time. At first John tried to put things back as close to normal as he could, Dean in his own room and Sammy with John in his and Mary's room. That didn't last long. The house creaked differently as he tossed and turned, and he still hadn't fallen asleep by the time Dean came shivering into the doorway to stare with mute, pleading eyes at his father. John knew the feeling: he was missing her too.

"All right, kiddo, what do you say we camp out in the living room, just for tonight?" He rolled over, got up, and tried to lift Sammy without waking him. Sammy murmured crankily but didn't go into a crying fit, so he counted it as a win and grabbed blankets and pillows with his other arm. Downstairs he installed Dean in the big easy-chair, cracking a rusty smile at the way his four-year-old body fit with room to spare on the recliner. He settled Sammy into the playpen and left his hand on his back until he was sure he was going back to sleep, then took the couch for himself.

He'd have less far to go to make up a bottle for Sammy when he woke up now, anyway.

As he drifted off to sleep, he wondered dully how long the hallway light had been flickering for. Probably some of the wires had gotten wet; he'd have to see if he could fix it tomorrow. Everybody said keeping busy was the best thing for grief.

* * *

He didn't have to try too hard to keep busy the next day, as it turned out. His partner at the garage called and asked if he was feeling up to coming back to work: he'd been working as much extra as he could to give John a break, but they were a small place and couldn't go indefinitely without him. As part-owner, John knew he was right, so he asked the neighbors if they were ok to babysit, and the hallway light slid to the back of his mind.

That night, the house seemed to creak louder than ever and a cold draft blew in from the upper floor. John didn't even try to drag everyone upstairs when it was bedtime, just settled the boys down in the living room again. He dreamed of Mary, reaching out her arms to him, trying to tell him something, but he couldn't hear her and when he tried to touch her, she blew away into fog and he woke with tears in his eyes and a sob caught in his throat. The hall light was flickering on and off again, which was definitely odd because he hadn't turned it on. Maybe Dean had wandered in the night? He looked over to the chair: Dean had tossed and turned, but was still sleeping there.

* * *

_Mary watched her family, frustration burning wildly in her chest. If only John could hear her! But his eyes passed right over her, and when she tried desperately to knock a baby toy off the table, her hand passed right through it. The ghosts she'd hunted with her family never had this much trouble catching people's attention, she thought bitterly._

* * *

Over the next days, they all slowly settled into routine. Normal life resumed, no matter how impossible it would have seemed, before, to consider normal life without Mary. The hall light resisted all John's attempts to fix it. Sometimes other lights in the house started to flicker too, and the fire department concluded that the fire must have been caused by faulty wiring and bad luck. John thought there was something wrong with that, but every time he tried to push for more answers, they started to eye him suspiciously, so he backed off. He didn't really know what had happened, anyway. He just knew Mary was gone (killed) and he was alone with Dean, who still hadn't started talking, and Sammy, who'd always been a happy baby, seemed to have a new angry note in his crying now sometimes. Well, maybe it was just easier to be happy when Mary had been taking care of him. God knows it had been for him.

It was mostly at night when the house got, well, weird. John had pulled more blankets from upstairs because it often got colder now than the house had ever been before, and he tried leaving the TV or the radio on to cover up some of the odder noises the house kept making, but the reception never seemed as good as it did during the day, and static often obscured the signal.

He dreamed often of Mary. John wasn't completely sure that his eyes were closed for all of those dreams.

* * *

He started going through Mary's papers and the belongings in her room whenever he had a few odd minutes. When he didn't find anything other than a silver knife in the back of the bedside drawer that he'd never known she kept there, he made the kids lunch and then moved on to the boxes in the attic. The hall light flickered again as he moved past it, the attic door swinging open almost on its own as he touched it. The boxes were mostly things from her parents' house, that she had barely touched in the past nine years she'd been living with John. The first thing he found was an impressive collection of old and dusty books on folklore. The second was a large, sturdy gunsafe. He remembered seeing a key by her knife downstairs and it was the work of a minute to get it and open the safe. What met his eyes he would never be able to describe later as anything other than "a heaping pile of crazy." There were guns, sure. He'd seen and handled plenty of guns when he was in the war. There were more knives, and at least two swords, a machete, wooden stakes, a half-dozen crucifixes and more tchotckes, charms, and bizarre unidentifiable things than he'd ever expected to see in one place.

He slammed the door back shut, and just stood there trying to process for a minute. Her reticence on the subject of her family had never struck John as suspicious; he knew the pain of losing his father and it wasn't a subject he liked to talk about himself. Now he couldn't help wondering if there was more.

What was in there . . . was that . . . witchcraft? Mary couldn't have been a witch. Witches weren't real. (How she'd died was impossible.) He didn't know anymore what was real. (Mary died on the ceiling.) He didn't know anything.

As he stood with his back against the metal door of the safe, one of the books he'd passed over first shuddered and skidded across the floor to his feet. John swallowed hard and picked it up. Then he backed slowly down out of the attic and fled to the relative safety of the living room, where Dean was still humming tunelessly to Sammy in the playpen as he worked a puzzle on the floor.

Dean jumped up the second he saw his father, and ran to hug him. John tried not to crush him with the strength of hugging him back as he scooped him up. "I was only gone ten minutes, Dean-o," he muttered. Somehow it felt like longer. Dean just pressed his face harder into John's chest and didn't say anything. Dean never said anything these days.

* * *

_Mary watched and wished with everything she had left that she could still hug her husband and son. But she was dead now, and if she knew anything about demons a lot more people were going to die unless she could get through to John, somehow. In life she'd done everything she could to preserve his innocence, but now they were paying the price. She had to warn him. It had been her last thought as she died. She had failed and she had to warn John._

* * *

John could tell Mike was starting to think he was losing it as he read through the old books that talked about shapeshifters and ghosts and a varied menagerie of things that went bump in the night. John couldn't bring himself to argue with that. He tried talking to a therapist about feeling like he was going crazy, but couldn't say what he needed to. Then he tried talking to a psychic. At least if they were already batshit, they wouldn't be judging him, right? The first palm-reader he tried didn't go so well, either, but then he knocked on Missouri Mosely's door.

The round black woman who opened it took one look at him and tutted. "Oh, sugar, you better come on in. I ain't never seen a body in as powerful a need of answers, and you ain't been gettin' a solitary one. Come on now, standin' there on the porch won't help you none."

* * *

Talking with Missouri was revolutionary. For the first time since Mary's death, John felt certainty that he wasn't crazy, that impossible things did exist in the world and he wasn't the only one who had seen them. Missouri also agreed to come and look at the house based on his fumbling attempts to explain the strange things that had been plaguing him ever since the terrible night of the fire. Since Mary had been killed, by an unknown something. He could think that to himself now. His wife had been murdered. And John was finally getting answers.

* * *

-ooooooOOOOOOoooooo-

* * *

In late November, the cops wanted to talk to him again, because Mary's doctor had gotten into a fatal accident on the way to see him. John told them that he had barely known the man: he wasn't local, but Mary had insisted on him because he was an old family friend, and he'd been good as far as John knew during both of her pregnancies. He had no idea what the man could have been coming to see John about, except to check up on the boys in the wake of the tragedy. The cops hrmmed and left, somehow dissatisfied.

That night, Mary seemed doubly urgent when she reached for him, only to go up in a pillar of flame when it seemed she might finally speak. John jerked awake with her scream echoing in his ears, automatically checking on Dean and Sammy. Dean seemed to have been woken as well, staring at his father with wide eyes, but his words still locked inside. Sammy for a change still slept peacefully.

The sound of breaking glass whipped John's head around to the mantelpiece. A framed picture lay on the floor. Automatically, John got up and picked it up. It was a picture of Mary and her Uncle Ed, smiling soberly at the camera. John knew it had been taken not long after the deaths of Mary's parents, when Ed had invited Mary to live with him while they took care of the funeral arrangements. John hadn't been invited; it was a private cremation ceremony, she told him, like even that much was closely guarded information. John set the picture back on the mantelpiece and went to sweep up the glass.

* * *

_"Call him! John! You have to talk to Uncle Ed, you have to know!" Mary tried to scream in frustration, but once again she was unheard and unnoticed. She was furious with herself, for failing to communicate with John, for failing to protect Sammy in the nursery that night, for making that horrible deal with the demon and for pretending in the ten years since that her life could ever be fine. Angrily she swatted the picture down again. This time it hit John's head as he knelt, sweeping up glass, and a trickle of blood began to run from his scalp where the corner hit. Horrified, Mary backed away, her insubstantial form dissolving even as John leaped to his feet in alarm._

* * *

"Mary?" John shook his head, trying to clear it. For a moment he would have sworn. . . but no. He was cracking up, going crazy. He had to hold it together. His sons needed him. "Mary," he repeated, but this time it was just a grieving whisper.

Still, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to call Ed in the morning. He could use someone to talk to about Mary and about all this craziness that had invaded his life, and Ed had told him at her funeral to call on him if they needed anything.

* * *

In the morning, Ed did indeed invite John and the boys over to his house that Saturday afternoon. He said they had a lot of catching up to do, and he'd been hoping to get the chance to talk to John some more.

The next day, the front page of the paper was all about the freak drive-by shooting outside the library leaving one dead, an Edmund Campbell who left no close relations and no explanations.

Obviously it was time for John to stop believing in coincidences.

Only problem was, he still wasn't sure what he was supposed to start believing in instead.

* * *

Apparently the police weren't nearly as confused, and John was brought in for questioning, during which the subjects of his emotional stability, the happiness of his marriage, and his early attempts to imply foul play in his wife's death were brought up and circled round with exhausting, humiliating, and infuriating repetitiveness. Eventually Mike, John's partner from the garage, confirmed what John told them about being at the garage, working, when Ed Campbell was shot, and the cops reluctantly let him go home.

"Listen, John," Mike started the next time they were both at the shop. "I feel bad for what you're going through, I really do. But you gotta pull yourself together here. The cops obviously misunderstood some stuff, and I don't mind setting 'em straight, but next time they ask me how bad your crazy is? There's only so much I can lie for you, partner."

John hadn't realized he was being that obvious. "It's ok, Mike," he tried to assure him. "I'm . . . seeing someone to try to work on all this crap." Too late he realized that sounded worse than it had in his head.

* * *

John couldn't believe Mike had gotten him to tell him about Missouri. Mike obviously didn't believe in any of this stuff that was supposed to be physically impossible, though he'd tried to be polite about it to John's face. But it was true that John felt like he might explode if he had to deal with this all by himself anymore. He really should go see Missouri again, see if she could help him sort through all of this.

* * *

Missouri seemed sharper, harder, when John knocked on her door, and he wondered for a moment if he'd come at a bad time, but then she welcomed him in. He wasn't even sure what he was there for, his thoughts tumbling over themselves chaotically until he opened his mouth and said, "I don't think Mary's death was the only one. I think it's still here, watching. I think it's killed others, it killed her doctor and her uncle." He paused, turning the next thought over, wondering if it was too crazy even now. "I think it killed her parents ten years ago. There are things I can't remember about that night. . . a burglar broke into their house, snapped her mother's neck and stabbed her father. . . he managed to find me and Mary. . . I got knocked unconscious. . . when I woke up it was all over. . . Mary was so upset. But I never saw the burglar. . . and there's something else. Did you see in the newspaper about those cows out in the fields with their throats slit, bled out? That sounded familiar, so I did some digging. Other than in the last two months, the last time we had cattle deaths like that was ten years ago, by the Campbell's house. And other places, too, around then." John stopped, breaths heaving in and out of him, terrified by the words that had come spilling out of him, by their implications.

"Hold up, there, boy, I'm still playing catch-up with you. What makes you think this. . . thing . . . whatever it is, is watching you? Most monsters, they got better things to do."

John took a deep breath. "I think there's something still in the house. Don't laugh at me! It feels . . . strange, and there have been things. . . Missouri, what do I do?"

"Ease up and breathe, first of all. If it'll set your mind at ease, I'll come take a look in your house. If there's anything to be found there, you can be sure I'll find it. Will that help you sleep at night?"

* * *

_Mary watched in horror as the woman followed John into her house's door. A terrible, ugly, seething wrongness lurked underneath the normal, pleasant-seeming face. Mary had never seen a demon's true face before she was a ghost, but she had no doubt that she was looking at one now. And it was strong, with a menacing power that radiated off it in waves. Mary had only been a ghost for a couple months; she was no match for it. With a shudder she retreated as far as she could into the recesses of her house, making herself as insubstantial and not-there as she could._

* * *

"Something evil was here all right, but it's long gone now. John, you can trust me," Missouri cooed. "If there was danger still here, I would sense it and I would tell you. But there ain't, and I can't say it plainer. Now ain't it time you fetched those boys of yours home from the neighbors' and settled down?"

"I guess. . ." John was hesitant to let go. He'd been so sure there was more going on. But he'd wanted an opinion outside his own scrambled-up head, and he was getting it. Probably best not to argue himself too far into crazy, with the one person who didn't already think he was.

"You know, if you want to give those poor folks a break, I'd be happy to babysit some for Dean and sweet little Sammy. Being a single parent ain't ever been easy on us working folk."

John nodded, distracted. "That's very kind of you. I'll let you know. Thank you again for coming out here to settle my mind."

"Oh, anytime, sugar. You just give me a call and tell me all that's going on, you hear?"

* * *

Missouri let herself out and John walked back through the living room to grab his house keys. He felt silly sometimes locking up even for the shortest excursions outside but he more often felt too uneasy these days to skip basic precautions. His hand was reaching out for his keyring when it went flying across the room. It was followed a second later by the lamp from the endtable crashing against the far wall.

"What?" he gasped, scrambling backwards, and then he realized he could hear shrieking.

"How dare she! How dare she just walk into my house!" The shrieking was resolving into words, like a radio tuning in from static. And it was sounding familiar. "Don't trust her, John! Don't you trust her one inch, not with our babies. She's dangerous! John, John," and now Mary's face shimmered into view, wreathed in flames like the flames that had killed her. As he watched the flames died down and her body became more defined too. "You can't trust anybody, John. I'm so sorry, it's all my fault, I screwed everything up."

"No. No, Mary!" John couldn't help reaching out to her. He still loved her so much, and to see her like this, in so much pain, was more than he could bear.

"It's true, John. I failed. I failed you all, and now you have to fix it."

"I have to . . ." John couldn't catch his breath. "But what can I do? I've been trying to make sense of all this, I can't . . ."

Mary held up her hand, hovering by his face urgently. "Listen. You have to destroy the demon that killed me. You have to save Sammy." The amount of planning that yellow-eyed demon had put into this, into getting to Sammy . . . Mary had been a hunter. A demon deal that sounded too good to be true always led to some greater evil in the end. She had been so stupid, so gullible to believe she was somehow an exception.

John was nodding, slowly and then almost frantically. "Kill the demon, save Sammy. Mary . . . "

"John, you have to go . . . leave here . . . John." Mary hesitated: her ghostly form flickered. The pain and grief in her eyes was greater than John had ever seen it. Her next words were torn reluctantly from her, dropping one by one into the space between them.

"If you can't save Sammy, John, you might have to kill him."

* * *

-ooooooOOOOOOOOoooooo-

* * *

The dark road stretched out endlessly before John when he pulled into St George's Motel. Dean had been sleeping in the backseat for the past hundred miles, while Sammy fussed disconsolately in the baby carrier. Dean woke as the car stopped and wordlessly clung to John's hand as he started toward the lobby, bouncing Sammy gently in his other arm.

"Welcome to St George's," the desk clerk finished, holding out their room key. "Guaranteed safe from dragons," he added with a wink and a nod to Dean, who stared up at him. John could tell he was wondering what a dragon was and how afraid of one he should be.

"Tell you what, kiddo, let's get everything up to the room and then I'll tell you the story of St George and the dragon when you're all tucked in," John suggested, ruffling Dean's hair. Dean looked up and nodded, smiling cautiously.

"So the dragon kept snatching up maidens and carrying them off to his lair, along with all the villagers' cows and pigs and sheep, but they didn't have a hero to fight it until St George came one day and said, 'Where is this dragon? I will fight him.'"

Dean looked up at John, his question clear in his eyes.

"Why? Why wasn't he scared?" John interpreted the look expertly. In hindsight, John thought wryly, maybe he should have picked a more innocuous kids' story.

Dean nodded.

"Well, he was a hero," John started, but that wasn't it. More slowly he said, "I guess, sometimes when you're scared, the only thing to do is to face down the thing you're scared of. Sometimes there are bad things in the world and sometimes they hurt people. But if you let them, they can make you stay scared forever. Sometimes the only thing you can do is to fight them until they can't hurt anyone else ever again."

Dean was staring, wide-eyed, at John. "That's what St George did with the dragon: he took his sword and he got on his horse and he rode straight at that mean nasty old dragon, and he killed him dead. And all the maidens came out and danced for joy, and the villagers made a parade, and that was the end of the dragon forever and ever."

Dean's face was scrunched up hard in thought. John leaned over and brushed a kiss across Dean's forehead, and got up to turn out the light.

"Daddy?"

The soft whisper halted him instantly in his tracks. "Yes, Dean?" He had to work to keep his voice calm: this was the first word Dean had spoken since the night of the fire.

"I wanna be brave, too, like St George." Dean was obviously making himself keep talking, but with each word it seemed to get easier. "Brave like you, Daddy."

"Oh, Dean," John breathed, rumpling up the covers to clasp Dean in a fierce hug.

"Kiddo, you already are."

End.

* * *

Full text of title: "Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

― G.K. Chesterton

2x12 Nightshifter: Dean, "You got no right talking about my dad like that. He was a hero."


	2. Missing scene: Mary's last words to Dean

Author's note: I conceived this scene almost as soon as I thought about Ghost!Mary in the early days, and it was only as I neared the end of Children Know that Dragons Exist that I realized (to my dismay) it would never fit in that fic, because of John PoV, and dramatic pacing. But now it gets its own little spotlight at the back of the DVD extras!

**So I'll Be With You When You Dream**

Summary: If Mary could share any last words with Dean, what would they be?

* * *

One last night, John and her boys were spending under the roof of the home they'd made together, and in the morning they would leave, probably forever. Mary could feel exhaustion trying to suck her into oblivion, after her display earlier, but she gritted her teeth and summoned every ounce of strength she'd had to fight it. She could stay under, dissipated, after they were gone; then it wouldn't matter. But she would not lose these last, precious few hours.

_She'd sleep when she was dead_, the thought floated unbidden through her mind. Hysterical. No sleeping yet, though. John had finally collapsed into fitful, exhausted sleep after tearing around the house for hours, boxing things up and packing the car. Mary stared at Sammy in his crib, her precious, perfect son, now doomed to God knew what terrible destiny in the demon's service, unless John could figure out how to save him. Sammy slept peacefully for once, smacking his mouth in his sleep just like any baby. Mary reached out a hand, the urge to try to touch him one last time overwhelming her for a moment even though she knew better, had by now passed her ghostly hands through so many objects and people, never to any effect.

There was a quiet gasp from the easy chair across the living room. Mary's attention snapped around, the room stuttering around her as she'd once used to see ghosts stutter across space and time. Dean's eyes were open. He was looking at her.

"Mom?" He whispered.

"Dean, sweetie," Mary responded. Her voice, at least, came out as warm as nothing else about her was, now.

"I don't wanna leave here," Dean told her.

"Oh, honey. I know. But this isn't a good place anymore. You have to go. Just keep looking forward, sweetie, you'll be alright."

"I'll miss you."

"Always remember that I love you, Dean."

Dean nodded, "I promise."

"And be good for your Dad."

He nodded again, his eyes starting to overflow. Mary could feel her grip on reality sliding loose, her incorporeal form fading.

"Take care of Sammy, Dean."

And she was gone, even as he whispered, "I will, I'll do everything."

**End.**

* * *

Author's Note: I'm sorry! Mary means well. I love Mary, really I do. It's just that Dean is so very . . . impressionable, right now.

* * *

Title is from a song about a desperate mother sending her defenseless baby blindly into a dangerous world . . . (Subtlety? What?)

From the Prince of Egypt (Disney), Deliver Us:

Hush now, my baby

Be still, love, don't cry

Sleep as you're rocked by the stream

Sleep and remember my last lullaby

So I'll be with you when you dream.


	3. To Arrive Where We Started

Summary:

John gets some questions answered. It might not be enough.

Title Quote:

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time." - T.S. Eliot

Notes:

I totally left the Missouri case unresolved so that I could write this! Also, if you haven't seen it, go check out the one-shot I wrote that goes along with this, where we meet Bobby! It's called "Singer Salvage and Babysitting."

On another topic, I am aware of how many black characters on this show wind up evil (and dead). My only excuse for this is that I was more bothered by how Missouri mysteriously vanished from the narrative.

* * *

**Lawrence, Kansas **

* * *

The dark figure eyed the fence around the cow pasture consideringly, then with a huff adjusted its path towards the gate. Vaulting over that fence was for lither bodies than the one it was wearing currently. Once through the gate, it set off determinedly towards the nearest cow. The cow started to amble in the other direction. The figure scowled, eyes flashing black as void, and the cow toppled over onto its side, lowing pathetically; it was the work of another minute to reach it and then a knife flashed once, swiftly, in the moonlight. An ornate chalice caught the blood, a finger stirred it, a chant threaded through the air.

"Master?"

"Report."

"John Winchester is gone, Master."

"Unexpected. Hmm. So, the child will need a new guardian, then."

"No, Master. He took both children with him and fled."

"What?" The voice issuing from the swirling blood actually sounded surprised for a moment, before recovering. "Well, we will simply have to plant a new watcher wherever he settles. He will not stay lost forever; if necessary, I can request his location from friends in," he gave a little cough of amusement, "high places."

"Pardon, Master. Would it not be easier to kill him, if he is suspicious? The special child can always be placed in a new home, or even raised by us?"

"You did not notice the last time I attempted to entrust one of my special children to the tender mercies of my demons? It seems that keeping a squalling brat alive instead of ripping its head off is . . . difficult for my little demon servants." He hissed wordlessly. "No. I wish the majority of my little experiments to reach adulthood. And as for fostering it out, we may keep that option in reserve . . ." The blood in the chalice bubbled fiercely for a moment, then the connection fizzled and died. With a curse, the demon got to its feet, set off towards another cow, and repeated the process.

"Apologies, Master. If we were allowed to use human blood. . ."

"I am well aware it creates a better connection. And it would be more fun for you as well, am I right?"

"Yes, Master . . ."

"Then why do I insist on this method? Answer me."

"At this stage of the plan, I know we must keep a low profile, Master. But . . ."

"I will hear no more whining. John Winchester will be allowed to go his way, for now. You will remain in place against the possibility of his return, and coordinate the others I will send you to watch him. The point of an experiment is to see what outcomes are generated by unexpected events. The man may strive against fate all he likes, but he will never thwart us. Our Lord will walk the earth, and we will see Him bring an end to it."

"Yes, Master. Hail Lucifer, in all his glory."

The connection died again, this time for good. With a grunt, the demon inhabiting Missouri Moseley got to its feet, cursing again as it stepped in a cow patty on the way out.

* * *

**22 years later . . .**

* * *

John waited in the shadowy room. It had been two decades since he'd last left Lawrence. It had been his home once. Now his skin crawled with the danger just of being in this place.

He heard the door open, and the footsteps getting closer. She was talking. He had to pretend that this was an innocent conversation, pretend that he trusted her until she was in the right place. He'd learned the hard way, with Bill Harvelle's life, how dangerous it could be to show himself to a demon too soon, the price for carelessness paid in blood and grief.

Mary's ghost all those years ago had been right to tell him to run. He hadn't had the experience, then, to fight this battle.

". . . John Winchester, I could just slap you. Why won't you go talk to your children?" Missouri's voice had always been high and sweet. There was no trace of lying in it now.

"I want to. You have no idea how much I wanna see 'em. But I can't. Not yet." John turned to look at her, something hard growing in his eyes. "Not until I know the truth." _Just step towards me, _he thought._ One more step, that's all . . ._

After a moment, Missouri snorted expressively. She stepped further into the room. This was what John had been waiting for. Halfway across the room, she ran into a solid, invisible barrier. "What . . .?"

"Above you," John said, standing up from the sofa. Missouri looked up and saw a Devil's Trap painted on her ceiling. She screamed, suddenly, in fury. "No!"

"I have a lot of questions," John said. "I think you might have some answers for me."

The demon whipped around, all pretense of being a helpful old woman gone. "Burn in Hell!"

"You first," he promised, low. John swiftly doused the demon in holy water and, while it shuddered in agony, tied it to a chair. "I want to know what your boss has planned for my son. And then I want to know how to destroy that son of a bitch. The only choice you have left is how much pain you want to feel before I get rid of you. Understand?"

"You should go back to chasing your tail, burning bones and chopping up monsters," the demon in Missouri hissed. "You should never have got this far, and it'll never amount to anything in the end. If you stop now, we might even let you live."

John upended a canteen over its head. Holy water steamed wildly off its skin.

"It doesn't matter, you fool!" the demon screamed. "You think there's anything you could possibly do to stop it? We will win, and the world will burn with our Master's wrath!" The demon stopped abruptly. It shut its mouth.

"Keep going," John growled grimly.

The demon sneered at him, and he raised another holy water flask threateningly. It shrank back as far as it could against the ropes binding it.

"What did you need Sam for?" John demanded.

"His looks," the demon said with a nasty smirk.

John looked unimpressed.

The demon scowled. "Come on, as if I'd tell you that easily! You want answers, John, you're going to have to work for them. You got the stomach for that, for carving your old friend here into bloody pieces?"

"Nice try, but I think I'll stick with what I know works," John told it, casually tossing another splash of holy water from his flask onto the demon. It dissipated in a puff of steam as the demon tried to keep itself still, hissing a little as it failed. John stared grimly down at it. "Fine, you don't want to talk about Sam, then tell me this: the yellow-eyed demon can be killed?"

"By you? Not likely." The demon paused, tilted its head. John recognized, with a sickening swoop of his stomach, that whatever it was thinking of saying next would be a double-edged sword, at best. Or it could be just a cunning trap.

But even knowing that, John still had to listen. He'd been working on next to no intel for so long; he couldn't pass up any chance to glean even a little bit more.

"There is one way. A gun that can kill anything. Figure out where old Samuel Colt's effects went, and you'll have the means for your revenge, John Winchester."

John didn't breathe. "And the catch?"

The demon smirked but pointedly didn't say anything. John stepped in and poured the second flask over its face. The runnels of steaming water ran down the demon's cheeks and dripped onto its chest as it screamed.

"All right! Just to get this over with," the demon sneered. It waited until John leaned closer, and whispered, "We want that gun too. Your fellow hunters have been hiding it from us. Find it and bring it out into play, and when you screw up? We _will_ take it from you."

John smiled, grimly. "I don't screw up."

The demon sneered up at him. "You will. You think we don't know your weak spot? Or really, spots. There are two of them, your sons, after all?"

"My sons aren't on this hunt. I've made sure of that. And they're not weak. You won't get to them."

"It's sweet, seeing you delude yourself, Johnny. But I think we both know that your valiant, devoted Dean will charge straight into Hell for you, or for Sam." The demon paused, and grinned. "And Sam? The best part is that your sweet little Sammy was born to be ours. He's going to do everything we want, just exactly according to plan." The demon paused again. It cocked its head, and a slow, terrifying smile spread over its face. "Just like his mother did."

John felt an explosion of rage start under his breastbone and expand through his whole body. He wanted nothing in the world more than to leap across the line of the Devil's trap he'd drawn so carefully and beat the demon into a bloody mess, to make it suffer like he'd suffered, like Mary had suffered, and like their children had suffered, growing up harsh and rootless in an endless struggle for their lives.

But John didn't lose control. Instead he raised a book. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus . . ." the syllables flowed smoothly over his tongue and he barely glanced at the book, despite never having exorcised a demon before. John believed in being prepared. The demon jerked and screamed, but John's voice didn't pause, didn't slow. Finally inky black smoke poured out of Missouri's mouth and sank into the floor, looking charred and stinking of sulfuric fumes as it was banished back to Hell.

Missouri's body slumped. John checked, but after so many years, it was a lifeless shell. The soul of the woman who had first helped him all those years ago was long gone.

John stood and looked at the ashy circle where the demon had gone. Rage and ill will still churned within him from the demon's last words, with nowhere to go and nothing left here to fight.

"You don't know my sons," John said, finally, to the empty room. "You don't know Sam like I do. Any plan that depends on him turning evil . . ." John shook his head. Sam had his head on straight, maybe even more so than him or Dean. They'd managed that much, in all the chaos of growing up hunting. Sam and John butted heads, sure. He could be rebellious and argumentative. But John would stake his life on it that Sam knew right from wrong, at the end of the day. When it came down to it, Sam would make the right call, as long as there was any of Sam left in him at all.

"Whatever plan you've got, it's never gonna go the way you want," John told the floor. Then he got to his feet and started to clean up. He'd need to know if the demon's story about the gun checked out. John wanted to screw up the Demon's plans sooner rather than later, and that meant that if he had a shot at ending the bastard, he had to take it.

If the demon had some hellish future in mind for Sam . . . if his sons were being threatened . . . if they meant it about making the world burn . . .

Whatever John could do to stop it, he would.

He had to.

* * *

Author's notes:

There's one more episode tag I have in mind for this storyline, for Heart. After that I may or may not have run out of things to say about John.

There's a lot of room for different interpretations of John's character based on the show, because we really never do find out most of what he was going through in S1. A lot of them are pretty negative. My goal isn't to say that John can't be interpreted as an asshole, but the notion that he prioritized his revenge over his sons is one that hasn't ever worked for me.

I tried to stay in between the lines of canon despite using colors possibly not found in nature, so if anything could be better, please do let me know!


	4. Tilting at Windmills

**Notes**:

I do recommend reading the two stand-alone fics associated with this, Singer Salvage &amp; Babysitting and Send These Tempest-Tossed to Me, before this chapter. They're lighter portrayals of young Sam and Dean growing up with John, because there's not enough of that!

Also, thank you so much to kitelester for the reviews, they put such a grin on my face, and to everybody who's favorited or followed! It lets me know the story means something and I love y'all for it.

**Additional Notes:**

Welcome to the new, reworked version!

This would be done now, except I plan to extensively rewrite To Arrive Where We Started, too, covering most of the year John was missing.

This would not be half as good without Wtgw being an awesome beta, helping me sort through all the things that were only obvious from inside my head. Tremendous thanks to her!

**Summary:**

Sam used to be so angry at his dad for the way they grew up.

Sam was so naive. Dean's now bound for hell and Sam has demon blood. It's time to reevaluate.

**Tilting At Windmills**

Sam had wished he could turn his brain off, or down anyway, more than once.

Now, any time his mind drifted, even for a moment, from the topic of saving Dean from Hell, it would obsess over how he'd been shown his mother, and the blood she hadn't been able to stop the demon from feeding Sam as a baby. Questions he couldn't answer wouldn't stop humming in his brain.

He hadn't been sleeping much, in the days since Cold Oak.

He'd been irritable enough to almost throttle his brother earlier in the evening. Sam had wanted to drive half the night because he'd finished his current tome of demon lore, and decided it was useless. Clearly the next step was to go through Bobby's library again immediately.

Or since Bobby's was a three-hour drive away, he supposed in three hours would do.

Dean had been equally determined to get shitfaced and look for casual sex in the bar next door.

Sam had nearly boiled over when he'd realized that Dean had no intention of budging. There had been a classic Dean display of refusing to acknowledge a problem by sailing out the door and pretending not to hear Sam, while Sam followed, arguing his desperate need for more research materials.

It was to no avail. By then Sam was seriously considering attempting to knock Dean on the head and carry him to the Impala.

He considered it for at least a second, anyway. Dean, damn him, grinned like he knew exactly what Sam was thinking (he probably did) and slung an arm around Sam's neck to drag him into the bar, still grumbling.

Dean would've fought dirty if Sam'd tried to force him into the car, anyway, or into anything else he didn't feel like doing.

Sam barely had time to notice the name of the bar, going in. _Don Quixote._ Inside, cheap tin armor decorated the walls and window ledges.

Dean probably thought it was just a quirky name, or if he did remember the story, it would be to approve of the image of riding off waving a sword to right wrongs.

But now Dean was ordering alcohol like it was going out of style. When his drinks came, he downed one and shoved another in Sam's direction, keeping the last two held close. Sam scowled. It was like Dean didn't even want to try to get out of his deal.

Engraved into the wall, the crazy old knight adopted a shaving basin as his helmet.

Sam didn't want to be here right now.

The Winchesters had long been experts in appearing to drink more than they actually were. It was essential for hustling pool or poker, and came in handy in any number of other situations.

One of Sam's early memories of being different from everyone else was of not long after he found out about monsters.

_He was still in the third grade, though they had just switched schools again over break, and he had been bugging Dean with questions about what to say to teachers if they started asking about what Dad did._

_"Tell'em Dad's a mechanic, or that he has to travel for work. Make it seem like we're normal, just like any other kids," Dean had said, scowling at his pre-algebra from seventh grade like it was personally offending him._

_"What if they don't believe me? What if they want to talk to Dad, and he's gone?" Sammy'd asked, worried._

_Dean had shrugged, the picture of unconcern. "Then tell them Dad's not home from the bar yet 'cause he drinks a lot."_

_Sammy had been horrified. "But that's not true! Dad! Dad, Dean said..."_

_"I heard," Dad had said, looking up from the pile of newspaper he was going through. "It's all right, Sammy. They'll be upset if they think I drink a lot, but not nearly as upset as they'd be about monsters being real."_

_How upsetting that could be was still fresh in Sammy's mind. "But what if they're so upset they try to take me away?" This was an older, more familiar danger. "What if they take me away and you don't know where I am?"_

_"Then I'll find you, Sammy, no matter how hard they try keeping you from me," he said, pulling Sammy onto his lap, even though he squirmed a bit. Wasn't he getting too old for this?_

_Dad kept going. "It's my job, protecting you. And you know what?" He'd asked. "If they all think I'm a dumb drunk, it'll be easier to outsmart them than if they think I hunt monsters, now won't it?" He'd tickled Sammy's ribs and Sammy, unable to stay serious, started to giggle._

_Finally he managed to get some words out between giggles. "But I don't want everybody thinking you're a dumb drunk!"_

_Dean looked up from his math set. "Then convince them we're all normal, and everything'll be fine, Sammy," he said, impatience coming into his tone because Dad was goofing off with Sammy while Dean was still working. "Sheesh," he added, just to make his point._

_"Uh oh, Sammy," John whispered, loud enough to be overheard. "You know who needs some good tickling right now?"_

_Sammy didn't waste any time coming off of Dad's lap. Dean looked up as he saw him coming towards him._

_"Oh no you don't, 'm s'posed to finish this... Hey!" Dean leapt out of his chair too. "Stop it, you little twerp! Dad!"_

_But Dad was laughing at him. That left Dean with no other option. Sammy had been easy to enlist, so Dean sent him around Dad's side to attack from behind while Dean himself distracted Dad with a frontal assault. He aimed for the ribs, the traditional weak points of tickle wars, and committed._

_Dad's newspapers were a mess by the end, crumpled and torn. But Dean had been laughing as much as Dad and Sammy, by then._

That had been a long time ago. All grown up now, Sam looked across the bar table at his brother. While he'd been lost in thought, Dean had managed to charm a pair of laughing twins into joining them at their table.

These days it was Sam who had to study, while Dean tried to distract him with frivolities. Sam excused himself hastily and ignored Dean calling after him as he charged out through the windmill-themed doors of the bar. He felt like his own personal stormcloud hovered over his head.

Of course stormclouds didn't literally follow people around. Except- oh, wait. Except if they were people inhabited by evil black demon smoke. Then storms were one of the fucking signs Dad had used to track them by, weren't they?

Sam's brain wrenched itself down the familiar track. How had his mother known the yellow-eyed demon? Had she known what he had planned for Sam? What the demon blood meant?

What exactly did it mean for Sam, come to think about it?

Had Dad known? Had he known that his wife knew a demon? Had he known that the demon had done something to Sam? All these years, had that been a factor in his thinking that Sam had never known about?

It had always infuriated Sam, knowing that Dad knew stuff he wasn't telling, wasn't willing to share with his sons.

_Back when they'd fought a werewolf the first time, when Dean had been sixteen and Sam - he'd still been Sammy then - only twelve, he'd helped with the research for the case._

_Dad had still had his arm in a sling from the last hunt, so it had been Sam who'd looked up the werewolf Jason Pine's life, his family (normal, married to a teacher, two kids). Sam had sympathized with him. It had seemed monumentally unfair that Jason should be hunted for being a monster three nights of the month when that meant the ordinary guy he was - not just pretended to be, but was - the rest of the time would have to die too._

_Dad had been concerned, too. He'd researched long into the evening, night after night, looking for some kind of cure or way to make it better, some way to make it safe so no one else had to die. He'd called other hunters for information; Sam had been there for some of those phone calls, though he'd been at school the final time Bobby called John back._

_It wasn't like he didn't know how hard John had tried to find a better answer. But by the time he got home that day, John had gotten Dean all geared up to hunt down "the werewolf" that night, and he'd flatly forbidden Sammy from sharing with Dean any of their doubts, the lines of research into a cure they'd been pursuing, or anything at all that might humanize the monster they were going after._

Sam had resented it like crazy. He'd spent years thinking, if only he'd been able to get Dean on his side, things might have turned out differently. He was sure he could have made Dean see the werewolf's human side; and then Dean might not have been so hasty to shoot, might have looked for another solution instead of treating the whole thing like a rite of passage he'd triumphed through.

It wasn't until Madison, until she asked him for her own death and he gave it to her despite his own heart shredding apart, that Sam was able to look back on what John had said after Dean killed that long-ago werewolf.

"_Dean knowing everything about Jason Pine wouldn't have changed what had to happen here, Sammy," he'd said seriously, sitting to look Sam in the eyes. "It just would have made it hurt more."_

_Sam had thought that was bullshit, at the time, and hadn't hidden it. John had eventually resorted to decreeing that Sam didn't have to like him for it, but his decision was final and not to bring it up again without reason._

_Sam had thought for years that his dad just hadn't wanted to bother explaining himself. Sam was old enough, he figured, to understand all sorts of complex concepts if they were properly explained._

Only now, as an adult, his dad a memory, did it occur to him maybe Dad had meant what he'd said in more ways than one: that it wasn't only Dean's will to fight he'd been protecting by withholding information, but Sam's optimism, his belief that everything had a solution, that any problem could be solved if only they looked hard enough for a way to make it better.

There had been no way to make Madison better. And for the first time Sam fully understood what his father had meant when he said that knowledge would only make what had to be done hurt more.

His father had deliberately spared Dean from feeling that as a teenager, and at the same time protected Sam's innocence as much as he could. And Sam's response had been to become an increasingly rebellious teenager, throwing himself into school and studying and criticizing the family business.

Sam was grown up now. The world had turned out to be worse and harsher than he had ever wanted to believe. There was evil not just all around him, but in his very blood.

All things considered, he understood why Dad hadn't told him everything. A part of Sam wished he still didn't know. He couldn't imagine growing up knowing that unknown evil lurked in him, or that his mom had died for him, pointlessly.

Then he thought about Dean knowing those things too, and shuddered even more.

Knowing that crap would only hurt Dean. It wouldn't help anything.

Sam wondered if Dad had known what the demon wanted when he'd begged Sam to shoot him. Sam had known that if he'd killed his dad in order to kill yellow-eyes, Dean wouldn't have been able to bear it. He wouldn't have been able to forgive or forget. It would have destroyed their relationship, so Sam hadn't done it.

Had Dad known then what he'd told Dean before he died? That if Sam couldn't be saved from the demon, he'd have to be killed? Was that why Dad had been so determined to kill the demon that he'd been willing, desperate even, to sacrifice his own life, despite the toll it would take on his sons?

If this hadn't occurred to Dean, Sam wasn't going to bring it up. Dean knew exactly why Sam hadn't taken that second shot, but the last thing Dean needed was something else to feel guilty about.

Sam would probably never learn exactly what John had or hadn't known. But Dad had loved him, him and Dean both, and Sam didn't doubt any more that he'd done his best for them. Even though he'd died too early, before they were safe, before the demon had been taken out, he died knowing that he'd given his sons everything they needed to keep fighting, and that he'd raised them right.

And they'd done it, in the end; they'd taken out yellow-eyes, together one last time.

Sam went back to their motel. The front desk guy was slouched in his usual spot. "Didn't like the bar?" He asked. Sam had noticed before that he always had to say something about everything. "That themed decor's pretty stupid, right?"

Sam blinked at him. Right, the deluded knight jousting at windmills.

"Knight's quests were more my brother's thing than mine," he admitted, making polite conversation.

"Always thought that Don guy was an idiot," the guy went on. "Didn't have the common sense to stay home instead of chasing after the impossible."

"At least he was doing something," Sam said, nettled.

"Yeah, getting laughed at."

Sam didn't reply. He stormed past to his and Dean's room.

Everyone said saving Dean's soul from Hell was impossible. Even Bobby didn't really believe Sam had a shot, deep down. He moped around Dean like he was already planning the funeral.

Fuck everyone.

Sam was an adult now. And that meant it was Sam's job to step up to the plate, to make the hard calls, to do whatever it took to keep what was left of his family alive and whole.

Everyone had thought Dad had been wasting his time, all those years spent chasing evil. Even Sam had thought it. But Dad had known what he was doing, known it was important. And in the end, they'd gotten the demon, tracked it and fought it and killed it. There were other demons now, but Dad had spent his entire life proving it wasn't impossible.

Sam didn't have to accept the way things were, if the way things were was wrong. Evil could be fought.

Evil could be killed.

Sam packed up the motel room with the efficiency of many years on the road. He put everything in its place in the Impala and went to the front desk again to turn in the key. He started to go, then looked back at the desk clerk, still slumped in his chair.

"Don Quixote wanted to change the world," Sam told him. The clerk jumped. "He wanted people to remember what it meant to have chivalry and honor and to do great deeds."

"Woah, dude," the guy complained. "He was crazy, fighting windmills. Everything he did was pointless."

"Was it?" Sam asked. "Five hundred years later, he still means something to people."

Sam turned and left. Maybe saving Dean was impossible, maybe not.

Just for one moment, Sam let himself think - what if it was?

If Dean was really going to Hell - then there might only be one thing Sam could give him that he could hold onto. Sam would make sure Dean knew - knew with certainty - that Sam would never give up on him, because Dean was worth saving.

Even if Dean didn't believe that now, Sam had a year to show him.

But that was if he failed, and Sam wasn't planning on failure. If there was a way to save Dean, any chance at all, Sam would find it.

From the Impala, Sam watched as Dean left the bar. He'd clearly been invited home with the twins. Sam kept a discreet distance and followed, driving slowly. He parked in view of their window. Dean noticed him, of course, but his new friends wouldn't.

Sam didn't regret checking out of their motel. It was fine; he'd wait until Dean was done here, and then they'd drive to Bobby's. In the meantime he could reread the book he had; it was remotely possible he'd missed something the first time.

He pulled out a flashlight. It was Sam's job to keep Dean out of Hell.

He wished he'd had the chance to talk to Dad about the demon bleeding into him as a baby. But he also knew what Dad would have said in the end. The words his dad would say whenever they faced something that seemed unbeatable echoed in his memory.

"If it bleeds, son, you can kill it."

He hadn't ever found that comforting before, all the years he'd spent growing up, fighting monsters.

Sam glanced up at the window where Dean cavorted, then back to his research on demons. Dad had always believed in him, even when Sam hadn't wanted anything to do with being a hero. Now Dad's words were something to hold on to.

He was determined not to fail Dad, fail Dean.

Sam had work to do.


End file.
